A few days ago, we actually backtracked a bit so we could go to visit The Dish – aka as the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope Observatory. In a former life, I actually did some research on radio telescopes while getting a degree in astronomy at the University of Arizona. So, I have a genuine interest in all things astronomy. I’ve seen the world’s largest radio telescope – Arecibo in Puerto Rico, the Green Banks telescopes in West Virginia, VLA in New Mexico, and many others.
As has been usual in Australia this year, we had rain. In fact, a funny thing happened on the way. I used Google Maps to direct us from Parkes to the telescope, and it took us the shortest route. Which happened to take us on some unpaved “dirt” roads. Only, you guessed it, with all the rain it wasn’t dirt. We gathered quite a bit of mud on our little two-wheel drive sports car. When we got to the end there was a sign that said “dry weather use only”. Oh well!
Anyway, I definitely wanted to take a 360 photo of the telescope. It was sprinkling, so there were a few drops of rain on the lens you can see if you look close at the resulting picture. And, I had to boost the photo with HDR techniques to bring out the colors – it was a yucky day, but the photo looks pretty good I think. Check it out by clicking on the PLAY button, and make sure you use FULLSCREEN for best effect.
